


Slowly, Comes the Light

by spirograph



Category: The Pacific - Fandom, The War at Home
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 02:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirograph/pseuds/spirograph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens progressively, like a box being slowly unfolded, unpacked piece by frustrating piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slowly, Comes the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Based in the Past Lives 'Verse created by [Nat](http://uniformly.livejournal.com) in her fic [This is the Thing](http://orkestras.livejournal.com/2272.html), an AU fusion of The Pacific and The War at Home.

It happens progressively, like a box being slowly unfolded, unpacked piece by frustrating piece. It's a jigsaw puzzle, rattling around in the oversized space of his brain while he tries to figure out the jumbled mess of it. Sometimes, he wakes from a dream and there's a sliver of sense hovering just on the edge of his subconscious but he can't quite decipher it, concentrating too hard a little too late and then losing it altogether. Brows knitted together he stares at his school work until the blue-ruled lines of his paper get fuzzy, desperately trying to grasp hold of the faint impression of something that seems important, some intricate portion of Snafu's life that he feels like he should understand. 

On the outside he's Kenny, gangly and awkward and very much a sixteen year old boy doing the best he can in a situation which doesn't have a manual he can work from. Inside, he's both Kenny and sometimes Snafu, who has seen in excruciating detail the many different ways a human body can be destroyed, who has experienced the loneliness and poverty of work camps, of a childhood void of everything Kenny has always taken for granted. It's all mixed up and diluted inside Kenny's head and sometimes he's not sure where he ends and Snafu begins. At first it's impossible to reconcile the two, scrubbing hands over his face as Larry verbally pokes and prods him for a decent explanation as to why he's suddenly so tired all the time, so distant and distracted. Larry's his best friend, but reliving experiences from a past life is right up there with seeing ghosts and believing in fairies, and it's not as if he needs more reasons to be stared at. He bumbles through excuses, they pour out of his mouth one after the other and Larry nods like he believes it, only scrutinises him for a moment before going back to his book. 

It's easier when Gene is with him, as if the mechanics of his mind run more smoothly, more productively, and the puzzle slots together a little easier. They sit side by side on the living room floor and Gene helps him bluff his way through assignments, through essays and subject matter that he doesn't really care about, smiling the entire time like he just can't believe it. And maybe he can't, this isn't exactly normal. And Kenny recognises differences in him, the subtle highlights in his hair and the tiny dark freckle in his eye that Eugene never had. He doesn't know if he's ready to explore what it means yet, the way his mouth gets dry when the tip of Gene's knee presses against his own, when their shoulders nudge. Snafu's emotions are like heavy, complicated weights he doesn't know how to juggle, sending jolts of unexpected want through his body like lightening and he doesn't have any clue how to get himself grounded. 

It doesn't matter if he's Kenny or if he's Snafu, remembering gore-stained battle fields and the gut-wrenching reality of nearly losing your life is difficult to handle and when he wakes close to morning, covered in sweat and gasping for breath, he fights with his sheets to try and untangle himself and wishes he didn't feel so much like crying. His stomach grumbles with exhaustion, his eyes feel impossibly heavy and there's something lingering just behind his lids each time he blinks, a shadow of memory he can't quite grasp. He stumbles into the kitchen and his mother smiles, pets him gently on the shoulder then stares in shocked silence as he proceeds to make himself a coffee, gulping it down mouthful after mouthful. It's bitter, and doesn't taste nearly as wonderful as he – no, as _Snafu_ \- remembers it, but he swallows it down anyway. 

Climbing onto his bike his head swims, coloured confetti of Snafu's experiences raining down over his own. Squeezing his eyes shut he shakes his head to try and clear them, gripping the handlebars to keep himself steady. And every weird thought he had as a kid, every strange little nagging feeling like something wasn't quite right, it all makes sense to him now. But that doesn't make it easier, and it doesn't stop the part of his mind that is so obviously Snafu from stubbornly remaining just beyond his reach. 

Banging on the Sledge's front door half an hour later he feels wired, trembling like a crazy person, caffeine surging through his veins, heart rate bouncing as he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. It's Gene who answers the door, pyjama shirt askew and hair mussed from sleep. “Hi,” he says, and Kenny smiles weakly, stutters out a greeting, an apology which is greeted with a wave of Gene's hand.

“You okay?” Gene asks, rattling around in the kitchen cupboards, pouring them both a glass of juice, and Kenny nods, wondering if Eugene's in there, too, looking out at him and wondering the same about Snafu. Gene stretches, shirt riding up to expose a smooth patch of stomach, a hipbone jutting out where his shorts ride low. Kenny forces himself to look away, tries to slow the pace of his breathing, tries to make it less obvious that he's slowly falling apart. He wants things, he wants unspeakable things that keep him awake at night and half asleep during school; lingering touches, the soft ghost of fingertips and hot breath close to his ear. He can't tell if his thoughts are real or something fabricated, a haphazard jumble of Snafu's memories stitched together with his own desires. Kenny's head pounds, an ache creeping in and settling just behind his eyes. “Thank you,” he says, sipping his juice and Gene smiles, raising his own glass. 

Sunlight pours in through the kitchen window, warmth spreading across Kenny's back. The house is quiet but for the gentle whirr of the washing machine down the hallway. _Calm down_ , he thinks, taking a deep breath and trying to talk himself out of shaking, out of losing his shit completely and totally embarrassing himself. “I...” he begins, faltering, words evaporating off of his tongue before he can say them. Vision wavering, Kenny puts down his glass, manages to ease himself into a chair. Gene speaks, walks right up to him and leans against the table but Kenny can't hear a word he's saying, can't focus on anything but the way his mind screams at him to say something, to open up and relieve the pressure. And it's like the snap of elastic against skin, the sudden shock of clarity when Gene's knee bumps into his, as he realises what it is he's struggling with. Pressing knuckles to his temples he's Kenny who has been in love with his best friend and neighbour since forever; Kenny who does well at school but is a total social failure; Kenny who has enough trouble handling his own emotional breakdowns as it is without adding Snafu's sexuality crisis into the mix. And it is a crisis, it's a well repressed flurry of _shoulds_ and _should nots_ all knotted together in an overwhelmingly large bundle of conflict that has been tearing Kenny's brain apart for the better part of a lifetime. 

“I don't know how to do this,” he croaks, and Gene kneels down, reaches out and pulls him into a hug. The crook of his neck smells like sleep and faintly of soap and it's less comforting than Kenny imagines it should be, twisting handfuls of Gene's shirt between his fingers and unsuccessfully ignoring the way his whole body hums, prickling with heat. “I'm so tired,” he adds and somewhere in the back of his mind he recalls darkness and gunfire and screaming at Eugene about exhaustion, about everything except the fact that he wanted him so goddamn badly it made him crazy. 

On top of everything he feels guilty, only the blame doesn't belong to him entirely, and his heart aches at the remembered screech of breaks and the rattle of a carriage, the soft lines around Eugene's eyes and the heavy weight of his pack, the cold walk home to nothing but the realisation that this was it, this was how it would be from now on. Punched out of shadow, memories clutter up Kenny's mind, always accompanied by feelings of loneliness, of an empty self-loathing that was eventually overtaken by a hollowed out sense of acceptance. “Sorry,” he whispers, “I'm so sorry” and like a floodgate it pours out from every corner, fragmented memories of fear and of knowing that for the rest of his life he would have to settle, would have to make do. But that wasn't Kenny's life – it isn't – but it _was_ a life, nonetheless. 

“It's okay,” Gene hushes, smoothing the curls at his nape, and it's an accident when Kenny presses his lips to Gene's neck, but he doesn't apologise, not even when Gene's entire body goes rigid and he inhales so deep that it shakes them both. It's easy then, for Kenny to pull back, to press an open mouthed kiss against Gene's jaw. And he can't help it, he thinks about mud-flecked skin and the itch of trigger-happy fingers that were always so desperate to reach out, to touch and hold and make their presence known; of Eugene's long fingers, fiddling with letters from home, folding and unfolding them over and over until the crisp cursive lines began to fade and the rain crept in and dissolved the rest; the soft sound of Eugene's breathing at night, the gentle god-fearing sureness of him that Snafu could never admit to admiring; of the kiss he'd stolen somewhere in the mess of Okinawa, pressed to the covered curve of Eugene's shoulder while he slept. 

“Eugene,” he hears himself say, voice cracked and far too loud. The washing machine has stopped, and his voice cuts through the silence, ricocheting off of kitchen surfaces like stray ammunition. He thinks it's uncanny how Snafu can relate almost everything to war, can drag Kenny down to a place where everything is about staying alive – and it's impossible to ignore the way Snafu's memories piece together to form the portrait of a man who spent his whole life thinking of himself as a soldier in battle, barely surviving, making the best out of a bad situation. 

When Gene kisses him it's hungry and warm, a swipe of tongue across his lips and a steady hand clutching at his shoulder. And maybe Kenny is bad at being gay, but Snafu never had the opportunity to try, and all of his want and all of that yearning - which had eventually, in the muggy heat of New Orleans, petered away into a dull, simmering burn - it bubbles to the surface until Kenny's kissing back, opening his mouth and moaning at the way Gene grazes teeth against his bottom lip. There's no reason to stop, no point in pretending that going slow would make a difference – Kenny feels as if he's been waiting for Gene to touch him forever, and every single brush of skin against skin feels desvistating; it feels real. 

“Don't stop,” Kenny says, heaving mouthfuls of air in between kisses, and Gene drags him down ungracefully to the floor, spreads him out on the tiles and looks at him with eyes so dark they're almost black, cheeks flared with heat, before leaning down to bite at the soft flesh of Kenny's thigh through his jeans, hot damp pressure that ascends until his dick's being mouthed at and he can't stop himself from arching up toward it. 

“'Gene,” he breathes “ _Gene_ ,” scratching blunt fingernails over Gene's shoulder blades, through his shirt, bucking up to try and get more friction, more heat. And there's a part of his mind that relents, that lets go and accepts that it's happening, that tiny part of Snafu that is weaved into everything Kenny has ever been, what he will become, the proverbial voice in his head who used to caution him against wanting things too much. 

The slam of a car door makes him start, makes Gene pause and pull back, craning his head toward the sound. “Shit,” he says, “my parents.” Kenny barely has time to register any kind of shock, to mourn the sudden loss of contact, he's too busy being dragged upstairs, being shoved roughly through Gene's bedroom door then hard up against it. Body flush against body and panting, trying to catch his breath. 

“I used to dream about you as a kid,” Gene says quietly into his ear, and Kenny shifts uncomfortably, “I thought I would die from missing you.” Gene is so much more honest than Eugene ever was, almost brutal in his confessions, tugging urgently at Kenny's shirt buttons and peeling the cloth from his body, throwing it down onto the floor. “The last few weeks,” he continues, unfastening Kenny's belt, struggling with the belt loops, “have been torture.” And when he looks up, his eyes are like blotches of ink pressed against red-tinged pages, as if he's been crying, like he feels as wretched inside as Kenny does.

“I want you,” Kenny blurts, like it wasn't already obvious, and Gene kisses the corner of his mouth, tugs at his jeans until they come loose, palms guiding them down Kenny's thighs. Kenny wonders if they should worry, about parents or consequences or tomorrow or something – Snafu was always worrying about things, but he never said anything, never let on that every day was an inch closer to the end of the war and that was what terrified him the most. More than the enemy, more than stray bullets. Through darkness he could squint and make out Eugene's profile, could already feel what it would be like to say goodbye. That stung more than anything, more than all those tiny pieces of shrapnel that flew around after an explosion and got buried in his skin, as if one of them had found its way inside, deeper than the rest, caught a ride on his bloodstream and gone straight to his heart. Kenny lets his head fall back against the door, tangles his hands in Gene's hair and lets him press kisses to his throat, the most ridiculously gentle kisses he could ever have imagined, one by one by one. It feels like he's unraveling, coming apart at the seams, ragged and worn out. It _hurts_ , and he doesn't know why – why it can't just be enough that it's happening now, that they're together _here_.

Face nuzzled against Kenny's neck, Gene says, “I don't remember what he smelled like.” And Kenny isn't sure what that means, isn't convinced that it works that way; doesn't want to say he never knew because he wasn't really there, that all his sensory information is all fucked up, corrupted by the impossible distance of a lifetime. But he presses his nose to Gene's hair, just to see, inhales the scent of it, the barely-there perfume of shampoo and something stronger, musky and familiar; the blur of drunkenness and weightlessness and a night sky that stretched out forever, dotted with stars that blinded him when he opened his eyes too wide; a sprawling field with so much grass and too many trees, arm pressed against Eugene's as they drank together in the quiet dark; Eugene's head lolling sideways against the pointed curve of Snafu's shoulder, so close that it had been easy to turn, breathe in and catalogue the scent of him, unmistakably sharp, the smell of red hair, of crap whiskey and military-issue soap. Gene smells different, feels different – but Kenny can't be certain. Not of that, and not of anything else. 

Fingertips dragging over his hips, thumbs pressing against bone, Kenny doesn't know if he can hold it together well enough to do any of this, but he lets Gene kiss him again, roughly this time, edged with desperation. Gene's shirt comes off – pale expanse of skin, dotted with freckles that Kenny reaches out to trace; Eugene was always so covered in mud, buried beneath layers of regulation uniform – always so goddamn appropriate, he never took his shirt off. But once, once Snafu had seen his arms in the daytime, sun bright and almost blinding as it reflected off his skin, dot to dot of brown-orange spots like tiny footprints, walking up over his arms and beneath his singlet. Snafu had wondered, distractedly, and more than once, how long it would take to count them all, map the pattern they made on Eugene's body. 

Kenny puts his lips to a cluster of Gene's freckles: they taste like sweat-dried skin and Gene cups the back of his head, holds him there. Forehead to shoulder, Kenny can suddenly feel how close they are, feels the dull thud of Gene's heart as it pounds against his ribs. The door creeks, hinges complaining, and when Gene eases his fingers beneath the waistband of Kenny's briefs, pulls them down and fists his cock, there's no parallel, no sudden feeling like he's been here before, it's just Kenny and Gene and the stillness of the bedroom. Gene captures the shock as it shows on Kenny's face, kissing him, licking into his mouth to try and keep the keening sounds from escaping. Gene falls to his knees, then, and looks up at Kenny, looks right at him with inky-black eyes and a concerned expression – he knows that one, a look that sounds like Eugene's voice whispering to him in the dark, saying _Snafu. hey, are you okay?_ And he wasn't, but he is now, he thinks, tangling fingers in Gene's hair and urging him forward, tumbling into the hot oblivion of Gene's mouth and thinking _yes, Eugene. yeah, we're okay now_ with a rabbit-quick pulse and his brain running a million miles an hour. And Gene's tongue swirls over him, around him, cheeks hollowed just-so until the room is full of nothing but soft, wet sounds and the harsh quaver of Kenny's breathing. 

Kenny looks down at pink lips and pink cheeks and the pink crown of his dick sliding in and out of Gene's mouth, swallows hard and realises too late that he shouldn't have looked at all. He means to say something, but instead he produces a hitched breath that trips over a startled moan and he's coming, spilling into an unprepared mouth that takes it anyway, tiny cream rivulets sliding down Gene's chin. All jelly-limbs the floor rushes up to meet him and Gene is right there, not even bothering to wipe his face before leaning in and his kiss tastes salty, bitter and Kenny thinks of sea water, of distant oceans that had surrounded another version of them, oceans that had never protected but instead imprisoned them; he remembers tears, being humiliated by the way he broke down, huddled beside Eugene in a shitty hole on a shitty island, somewhere between midnight and first light and Eugene saying softly, _It'll be over soon_ but that – that made everything so much worse, and Snafu – _Jesus Christ_ , he hated himself and he could hardly bear it, couldn't stand the feel of warm fingers clutching at his own in the dark, offering up comfort and sympathy when he wanted so much more. 

But this is something different, Kenny thinks. This isn't like that at all, not really – this is the man he has loved his whole life - in another life - contained within a man he barely knows, stroking the side of his face and whispering, “It's gonna be okay, I swear.” And maybe Kenny has his doubts, but Snafu falls into the promise head first, always so willing to trust Eugene, and he wraps himself up inside it, safely cocooned inside the thought that things might finally be alright. So Kenny nods – because, whether he likes it or not, Snafu's a part of him now – and little by little he relaxes, lets Gene pull him forward into a hug, up off the floor and toward the bed and maybe--

maybe he imagines it but somewhere, between midnight and first light, Kenny swears he feels Snafu sigh with relief.

**Author's Note:**

> For more of this Verse, read [it comes with a price](http://soteria-house.livejournal.com/6586.html) & the [amazing (and porny) vignettes](http://soteria-house.livejournal.com/7510.html) written by [Megan](http://thoracopagus.livejournal.com).


End file.
